Last weekend was a three day weekend here in Canada. I got out of the city with a few friends and visited Banff National Park. Actually I ended up visiting 3 national parks in one day! I first hit, Banff National Park, then went to Jasper National Park and then Yoho National Park. I was able to do this all in a few hours because all of these parks border each other in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
The first place I went to was the Columbia IceField in Jasper National Park. I’d been to the IceField before but this time I took the super fancy tour on the special IceField Tour Bus. It cost about $38 for the 1 hour 20 minute tour.
The bus that is used to take you on to the IceField was pretty cool. In fact the ride on it was pretty much the highlight of the trip. I’d never been on a vehicle that big before so that was an experience in itself. Here’s the view from inside the bus. Notice the glass in the ceilings to maximize your view of the surrounding mountains.
The bus takes you well on to the IceField. Once you get there there is a little area that you can walk around and take photos. Which is exactly what I did.
Here’s some of the crazy pictures I took of my IceFields Experience.
My name is Michael McKinlay and I live in Calgary, Alberta Canada. Although I was born here, I have lived in a few other places in Western Canada such as, Saskatoon, Regina, Medicine Hat, and Edmonton. I also spent time in Hong Kong and Japan. [
Wow, that’s quite a bus! Was it a bumpy ride?
I’m so glad you asked! The bus was not very bumpy at all… I think the maximum speed that it could reach was only 20 km/hr and most of the time it traveled even slower than that.
The funnest part was when we went down a 35% grade. That may not sound like much but trust me it was… Actually I may not be entirely right on that percent but it was ridiculously steep!
Love the shot of the glacier, nice one Mike!
Thanks!
Where can I buy a bus like that? I need it for the Japanese traffic Jams!!
You can contact Foremost Industries in Calgary, Alberta. They only cost $1.25 million each and each one of the six tires costs only $5000. Oh yeah the maximum speed is an amazing 20 km/hr and I’ll guess that you’ll probably get about 1 mile per gallon.
Can you do any drifting with that bus? That would be sweet.
Well maybe if you souped it up a bit and got the Japanese version instead!